Women in Leadership
Virtual Event 2024

Harnessing your power and influence; articulate your leadership brand and manage your future career

Join Professor Vinnicombe and Dr Anderson in their exploration of the myths of female leadership, the challenges women face today, and the practical options available to women to better position themselves for executive success. By the end of the keynote, attendees will gain insight into:

• Articulating your own leadership brand and verbalising your ambition,
• Leveraging the power of political will as well as political skills
• Navigating hybrid working to manage your future career.

You are smart, you are successful, and you are great at negotiating for others. If only you were so successful at asking for what you want. In this session, we will help you ask for exactly what you want - be it a job, a promotion, a pay rise, support, or more resources. Learn how to approach the negotiation table with confidence, and leave with what you want.

What we'll cover:

• How to approach any negotiation
• What you need to prepare in advance
• Addressing challenges – negotiation tips, moves, turns, and rebuttals
• Closing the negotiation

Your professional network profoundly impacts your job effectiveness and well-being: it is at the very heart of how you get your job done and how you advance your career. But what makes a strong network and how do you build it?

Based on the latest research into networks, this session is designed to help leaders and aspiring leaders to develop the techniques you need to build rich and diverse support and advice networks and to discover new networking practices to leverage them more effectively, both for your personal career goals and those related to your leadership role.

Through various reflection activities you will:

• gain practical insight into how networks can best help you with career challenges
• learn how you can become a more effective leader by promoting a culture of helpfulness in your organisation

Dr Deirdre Anderson is Director of Cranfield University's Gender, Leadership and Inclusion Centre (GLIC). The GLIC is the hub for Cranfield's long-standing international reputation for research, executive development and collaboration with industry and government to ensure an evidence-based approach to attaining every woman's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels in professional life.

An experienced occupational psychologist, Deirdre spent over 20 years working with organisations in the field of Learning and Development, before obtaining her PhD and taking up academic research and teaching at Cranfield University. Deirdre's research focuses on flexible and hybrid working, gendered careers, and work and family issues in varying cultures. In all of her work, she seeks to increase awareness of inclusion and diversity, challenging the often-unconscious processes which can limit individual actions and perpetuate systemic barriers in terms of organizational practices. Deirdre frequently presents her research at practitioner and academic conferences within the UK and internationally. Her current research explores the barriers facing Black, Asian and minority ethnic individuals in progressing to senior leadership positions in FTSE 350 companies.

As Director of Coaching/Lead Coach at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam (RSM), her specialisation is developing programmes to advance dynamic team success and to assist individuals to share challenges and best practices in service of each other's developmental goals.

Her teaching portfolio includes leadership development programmes and conferences focussing on leadership from a coaching perspective and she incorporates neuroscience in her coaching and teaching portfolio. Furthermore, as Lead Coach for the Erasmus Centre for Women and Organisations (ECWO), she specialises in coaching women, supporting gender balanced leadership and women empowerment and also devotes time to encouraging and empowering other coaches in their development. She is described as authentic, energetic and (com)passionate in all her engagements.

Penny Hoffmann-Becking is a Senior Teaching Fellow at Imperial College Business School and Deputy Academic Director for the Global Online MBA. She joined the business school in 2020 following a 25 year career in business and management consulting.

Penny teaches strategy, business problem solving, organisational behaviour and leadership on a number of MBA and undergraduate programmes.

Prior to moving into teaching Penny was a partner in a boutique consulting firm, responsible for building and leading a practice in strategic change and organisation design.

Before that her business career spanned both the corporate and consulting worlds, delivering major change projects for firms such as BP, Shell, Diageo, Ruhrgas, Vattenfall, Vodafone, O2, The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Santander, Gilead, SAS Institute and Liverpool Football Club. Her career has taken her to countries as diverse as Barbados, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Kazakhstan and she lived in Germany and Austria for a number of years.

Nan Guo is the Director of the Learning Innovation Lab at ESMT Berlin, where she leads an international team to design and deliver impactful and innovative educational programs. She has a passion for making high-quality business education more accessible to learners around the globe for their personal and organizational transformation. Nan has a rich and diverse background in program development, business development, and management. She has held various leadership positions at German companies of different sectors and sizes, where she has built and led high-performance multi-cultural teams. She is the program director for the Women Leadership Excellence Program at ESMT, which aims to empower women leaders to achieve their full potential.

Susan is a global leader and advocate for change at Cranfield University, specialising in the lack of women in leadership (especially on corporate boards), women's leadership behaviours and the issues involved in women developing their executive careers.

Susan was Founder Director of the Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders from 1999 to 2016 and the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Endowed Chair in Women's Leadership at Simmons College, Boston, USA from 2013-2016. She and her co-authors produce the annual Female FTSE Board Report, which she launched in 1999 and is regarded as the premier research resource on women directors in the UK and is renowned globally.

Susan receives regular recognition worldwide and was honoured in 2016 by the International Women's Forum as a woman who has "Made a Difference" in the world. Susan was also named in the HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021 - and has been inducted into the Thinkers50 Management Hall of Fame in 2021 (founded in 2009, the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame honours the legacy of an elite group of thinkers whose work has had a profound and lasting influence on the world of management).

Susan was awarded an OBE for her Services to Diversity in the Queen's New Year's Honours List in 2005 and subsequently awarded a CBE for her Services to Gender Equality in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2014.

Erika Harriford-McLaren currently holds the position of Corporate Communications and PR Manager at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). In this role, she leads a dynamic team responsible for overseeing the organization's corporate and research communications, editorial content creation and review and manages the school's PR and media relations. She is also an active member of RSM's IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) steering group.

Prior to her role at RSM, Erika served as the global strategic marketing communications manager for ESOMAR, a prominent global market research association. She also played a pivotal role in launching and expanding the communications team at the International School of Amsterdam, one of Europe's leading international schools. During her tenure at the school, Erika represented the institution at Princeton University's ISS Mary Anne Haas Women's Symposium.

Erika holds a bachelor's degree in business communications from the University of Kansas and further pursued her education earning a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law, specialising in international human rights. With a diverse background and a passion for effective communication, Erika brings a wealth of experience to her role at RSM.

Natasha leads Standard Chartered's approach to positive community impact. This includes global philanthropy strategy, Futuremakers by Standard Chartered: the Group's global youth economic empowerment initiative to tackle inequality and promote greater economic inclusion; the Standard Chartered Foundation; employee engagement with communities and community impact measurement.

Natasha joined the Bank in August 2015 and has held roles managing Goal, an education programme to tackle gender inequalities with adolescent girls; the strategic development of Futuremakers and impact measurement of the Bank's Sustainability Aspirations. Prior to joining the Bank, Natasha designed and led multi-party education and social development programmes in the not-for-profit and public sectors in the UK, Angola, West Africa and Brazil. She is fluent in Portuguese, holds a Masters in Education and International Development from the University of London and an Executive MBA from Cranfield School of Management.

Convinced of the power of quality education to transform life chances, she is Vice-Chair of the governing body of her local primary school.